Ballmer: No Sleep Lost Over Linux; Q&A with Windows Kernel Guru

Steve Ballmer had the stage to himself Thursday in San Francisco as he introduced Windows Server 2003, a new version of the company’s server operating system that Microsoft’s CEO described as “the right product” to help companies stretch their IT budgets. Read the interview at News.com. In the meantime, Windows core technology guru Rob Short explains how hackers were involved in Windows Server 2003 development, and why not all NT4 applications will run on it.

Its interesting that Balmer blew off the rising disparity between hardware and software costs. We’re geting to the point that greater and greater increases in hardware performance and capabilities are becoming less and less relavant to the vast majority of users who primarily are only interested in web, email, basic games(high-end gaming is a small market), word processing, spreadsheets, and media playback. The result of this is that people aren’t going to be interested in paying the same prices for hardware that does far more than they really want or need, and thus will be seeking out hardware that is much, much cheaper. Think basic system and peripherals for $100, display for another $100, and a 3d graphics upgrade for better gaming for another $100. (This is the model VIA is going towards with their epia stuff) Then, if you want to put the latest and greatest office on that (with a ton of features most people will have no interest in) then office costs anywhere between 50-75% of the system if somehow the operating system cost magically becomes just part of the $100 basic system.

2003-04-25 5:33 pm

I’ve had the pleasure of using Win Server 2003. (A close friend is a tester.) I found it to be very security-centric. I was actually impressed.

The whole section about how the team wanted to balance securty measures with usability, may actually be truer thant we can imagine. The system as a whole seems to be much “harder”.

As a test we set up IIS to serve a basic web page but also wanted to test it’s ability to work with php and mysql. It took a great deal of tinkering with security settings to get IIS to actually let the .php files to be read/written by normal web users. I never got MySQL to successfully run. I am suspicious that MySQL may not be compatible with 2003 Server yet.

If anyone has any thoughts on this, I would be delighted to know.

2003-04-25 5:54 pm

No Sleep Lost Over Linux; Just hair

2003-04-25 6:01 pm

Eventually Linux is going to become very mainstream. Now that Photoshop can run on Linux, I will be migrating over this weekend. It’s not just me either. There has been a huge growth for linux over just the past 2 years. This will continue. More and more software is being released for linux, and more companies are starting to port their apps to linux than ever before. Eventually Microsoft will lose.

I mean heck, stranger things have happened. The berlin wall fell. The world trade centers fell. AOL/TW stock fell. I know that Microsoft has a lot of cash, but that only goes so far.

2003-04-25 6:03 pm

“Linux itself is a clone of an operating system that is 20-plus years old. That’s what it is. That is what you can get today, a clone of a 20-year-old system.”

Somebody please tell IBM: kick out Linux, it’s too old.

“some people are choosing Linux. I don’t think that is going to continue to be the case.”

Hello Sun, do you listen? The end of Linux is near.

Thanks for the info Ballmer, what would we do without you?

2003-04-25 6:07 pm

What innovation? Good software is built on years of study and research, not over-night innovation. The guys at Microsoft know this. This interview is just for potential investors.

2003-04-25 6:07 pm

“Now that Photoshop can run on Linux, I will be migrating over this weekend.”

Are you really telling me that PS runs on Linux natively?

If it’s just via Crossover Office, I really, really would advise against switching over. WINE just isn’t all that stable, and it would suck to have to go and reinstall Windows again.

-Erwos

2003-04-25 6:09 pm

it might be a 20 year old system, but it gave Winxp, 2000 servre etc.. a run for there money and guess whats even more funnier, its getting updated everyday, i mean it took MS 20 years to get to where linux was in in 10 what will happen when linux takes another step forward, LOL ms will take 20 more years!

also lol all peeps buying ms all these years now have to upgrade to the so called “most securist” windows version lol compared to windows yes maybe but not linux

2003-04-25 6:11 pm

But when will Microsoft loose and what? Windows? They have so much money that they can make a big strategy move over night.

2003-04-25 6:15 pm

Microsoft is publicly saying they are catching up with Linux, and in a lot of areas they are. They really have been listening to guy in the trenches who is going to steer an IT department toward Linux. Well, except the little part where the guy has to requisition a new Windows license as opposed to burning an ISO.

I like to see this; competition on a technical level. This isn’t about marketing, hardware drivers (though that is a continuing issue), but about writing good code, and Linux can certainly rise to the occasion. When stuff like SELinux and ACL support makes it into mainstream server distributions, we’ll really have something. And security aside, any other innovation Microsoft makes in software, Linux can match it. It may be a challenge, but at least it is on a fair battlefield.

And as far as security goes, I still would rather run a firewall on OpenBSD than Windows, no matter how well they have inspected their code. They need to prove this stuff works as well as they are claiming.

2003-04-25 6:18 pm

Instead of flaming, I’m going to comment on the content! ;-0

The thing that gets me is that the server and XP home and pro “share a common code base”. This is the same code base that has been patched incessantly since it’s launch right? The one with all the vulnerabilities?

Shutting everything off and giving only the admins “root” privileges only will work if you keep everything turned off (the encased in lead defense),and noone gains root through the VM, or some other hole.

Great strategy.

2003-04-25 6:18 pm

“we took eight or ten of our best coding people and sent them off to go and be hackers.”

This is exactly why Microsoft products will never be truly innovative (they just buy it) and why there will continue to be security problems (the hackers from the companies they buy are long gone).

2003-04-25 6:20 pm

None other than Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer paid a personal visit to Munich city mayor Christian Ude at the end of last month to drum up support for the company’s operating system software, which faces growing competition from open-source Linux….

We need to more effectively respond to press reports regarding Governments and other major institutions considering OSS alternatives to our products. We must be prepared to respond to announcements, such as this one by the Japan Government (or prior announcements in Peru, Germany etc) quickly and with facts to counter the perception that large institutions are deploying OSS or Linux, when they are only considering or just piloting the technology. Announcements by governments are reported quickly around the world and require more coordination. In several instances, our ability to communicate effectively has been hindered by a lack of integration across groups in Redmond and the subsidiaries.

“There are a couple of things that have stunned me. It’s beyond surprise. It’s shock. Particularly at the high end. These customers all have a Linux strategy envisioned for their company. They’re way beyond the early adopter stage. They’re very sophisticated about it. They understand those cost savings. They understand the efficiency. They’ve got return on investment models. They’re beyond pilot stage. They’re into what I would call the mass production stage. They’re moving production workloads. They’re working closely with their application vendors as well as their own application departments to move a lot of strategic applications over to Linux platforms.

They’ve done server consolidations. They’ve done the studies. They’ve done the consolidations. You’ve read the stories about Merrill Lynch and E-trade and a lot of the other multi-nationals. It’s a real business to them, and it’s really important to them.

So that’s been the huge surprise. The other surprise has been that customers are looking for alternatives right now to proprietary architectures. They want an alternative to Microsoft Windows and they’re serious about that. In a lot of cases they’re asking for a proprietary proposal and an open source proposal.

The other thing that I’ve been surprised at is that I’m running into some medium-sized companies that run their business on Linux–the entire operation. All of their file and print servings are consolidated. All of their ERP apps are running on Linux. I’ve been with some companies that are doing that in the SMB space. And then on the Enterprise side, we’ve got companies that have visions, with target dates and quarters, in which they’re going to have a great chunk of their company running on Linux.”

2003-04-25 6:34 pm

Hey,

Firstly I already have WinXP and RedHat 9 running on my machine. I installed Photoshop on Linux via Crossover Office 2. Guess what, it IS all that it says it is! Photoshop runs PERFECTLY. Trust me, I use photoshop EVERY DAY!

My migration simply means that I will not be booting into windows any more, only into Red Hat Linux.

As to what Microsoft will lose… umm.. it’s death grip on the personal computer?? Microsoft will not go out of business, but it will eventually not be as big of a player as it is now. IBM used to be a major player in the desktop market… that ended and so will Microsoft’s dominance.

2003-04-25 6:35 pm

“he result of this is that people aren’t going to be interested in paying the same prices for hardware that does far more than they really want or need, and thus will be seeking out hardware that is much, much cheaper.”

While prices will come down, Consumers are moving towards getting the best value… not the best price. A better value can be achieved be retaining only slightly lower costs by adding more robust functionality… such as 802.11b/g, zeroconf, IEEE-1394, flat LCDs etc.

1 Windows 2000 is Mistakend[my English =] is f*cked up a little] with FreeBSD vice versa

2 [UNREAL] IIS has been ported 2 FreeBSD

2003-04-25 7:00 pm

Sun took FreeBSD and turned it into Solaris?

There must be some good crack on the streets of Seattle these days!

2003-04-25 7:08 pm

>> Linux itself is a clone of an

>> operating system that is 20-plus

>> years old.

And that’s supposed to be a disadvantage? Somebody please explain.

>> I would argue that our customers

>> have seen a lot more innovation

>> from us than they have seen from

>> that community.

How about giving some examples? On the server end, most of what I see is MS trying to implement for Windows, features that have since been available on Unix. I’m not saying that’s not important for their competitiveness. What I’m saying is that, if anything, MS is the one doing most of the copying/re-implementation.

2003-04-25 7:16 pm

SunOS was the predecessor to Solaris

He it the chief software architect at SUN

2003-04-25 8:00 pm

SunOS Solaris… how are they diffenrent???

Tell Me the History [or give me a link=] ]

2003-04-25 8:08 pm

Good god! I guess it’s time to throw away calculus then! It’s pushing 400 at this point! Heck, even today, NASA still uses mostly 19th century physics! Just because a basic design is old doesn’t mean it’s not as valid today as it was when it was made. Now if you’re talking implementation, then Balmer is just blowing gas. The algorithms in the Linux kernel take full advantage of all the research done in the last decades. Some stuff, like the I/O layer and VM are literally less than a year old, and incorporate a huge amount of recent practical knowledge. The basic VM algorithms in Windows XP haven’t been changed since NT 4.x. Why? Because NT’s VM is famous for being incredibly opaque. They’ve got all sorts of crazy heuristics all in a delicate balance, and nobody really wants to touch it in fear of breaking the whole thing. So even though NT’s design might be newer (and it shows in some of the object-oriented design techniques) it’s implementation isn’t nearly as clean and managable.

2003-04-25 8:56 pm

In all fairness I want to say I use Windows 2000 and XP mostly because I am forced to but as products go they are much better than any thing MS has done before.

Obviously MS has realized that they now have an emerging form of competition mostly on the server side but also in time on the desktop. I feel the problem

What seems to have been forgotten over time is that the question is not how good is an MS OS because when there is really only one real choice the question is irrelevant. We are forced to use a product dictatorship “Microsoft” and if enough people would understand that for the same money they spend today they could and should have a much superior product. If there were only one real manufacturer of cars just amagine what you would be driving; that is what MS has done to us; the world sees the product and says but it is such a great product; well ya if you had the top of the line yugo and that was the best car on the planet you would think you were pretty special; now look at it in the actual glogal market you have your choice of thousands of cars with every concieveable option from the cheapest to the most exotic all of them are better because of the simple fact that if you don’t want a Yugo you can go somewhere else and purchase what ever you want with MS the only choise is MS “THAT IS THE PROBLEM”.

2003-04-25 9:25 pm

The point of “security” is so that no unauthorized user can get into your system. How the hell can you call it secure when MS gives itself permission to do anything it wants to your server in the EULA? I don’t only want security from hackers, I want security from MS. I don’t want them or their employees poking around in my system. I don’t want my usage statistics or hardware information sent back to them. I don’t want the crash data sent to them (what happens if it contains sensitive information?). Considering MS’s history of being cracked and hacked, I don’t want even one bit of my personal information stored in their data centers — besides, they don’t need it anyway.

2003-04-25 9:32 pm

For some customers, [the non-commercialization of Linux] can be viewed as advantageous. But customers will never really know who stands behind this product. If the lead developer for this component chooses to do something else with his life, who will carry on the mantle for that?

Well, let’s see …

If the component is open source, and the developer decides to do something else with his life, then it would be quite possible for somebody else to pick it up and continue the work, since the code is readily available.

Now, if the component is proprietary and made by a commercial company that goes belly-up, whwere does that leave you? Even in the case of propreitary things, it still may be possible for open source developers to hack it. .doc mostly works and .mdb is currently being worked on.

So, exactly what point was Balmer trying to make here??

2003-04-25 9:59 pm

“it’s death grip on the personal computer??”

Dude you have had the choice of OS for many many years…along with all the other people stating that MS has a death grip on your computer.

Are you really that big of a pussy whipped little bitch that you can’t make up your own mind what to run. I mean some people like Windows some dont. Someday everyone will realize this and quite bitching like little school girls. 🙂

The point is clear. I think you’ve shown that the point is in fact incorrect.

The thing that interests me is that this interview is full of similar statements, that when analysed are equally misleading. For example, the points about not being able to go to IBM to fix stuff in the operating system, cos they don’t write the code. On one level, this is almost true, however, I bet if you paid IBM, they’ll fix stuff for you. But, it misses one crucial point. If you want something fixed, then you can go to the developer, and ask them to fix it. If they won’t, and it’s that important to you, you can pay someone to fix it – the reason you can do this? – you’ve got the source.

If I want MS to fix the countless security holes in IE, can I go to them and get it fixed? No. Can I pay someone else to do it? No.

This interview is full of misleading half truths and marketspeak. And the reporters just lap it up without question.

Journalism is great isn’t it.

Matt

2003-04-25 11:34 pm

Every time I read an interview on Gates or Ballmer I am always impressed by how well they understand their business and their customers.

I really don’t dwell on their FUD, and its out there. I don’t find Ballmer technically literate but MS makes a point in understanding what their customers want and how they can make that happen. Companies like Apple balk or do nothing as was the case at Eli Lilly Corp.

The challenge of Linux is not so much on the server end but mainly on the desktop. In many ways 2000/XP are better solutions than Linux. Cheapest is not best, especially for companies that want a low level of expertise in maintaining their desktops.

2003-04-25 11:48 pm

The site microsoft.com is running Microsoft-IIS/6.0 on Windows Server 2003.

Windows Server 2003 users include Microsoft

2003-04-26 12:02 am

its not that he isnt losing any sleep over LInux, its

that he is being kept quite awake with all those

penguins hes been counting.

2003-04-26 12:13 am

Extract from CNET…

So when it comes to development models, you’re claiming the edge?

If you want a fix now, we may need to perform better, but you know where to go. There is nobody to turn to if you as a (Linux) customer says, ‘I need this.’ You can’t turn to IBM. They don’t write the thing. It’s not like IBM can support Linux the way they support the mainframe operating system. They don’t write the code for it. All they can say is, ‘You can call us and ask us a question, but if you actually want something done we can’t do it.’

So Ballmer doesn’t know about any companies?

I know Ximian as one. If you know more add to the list.

2003-04-26 12:27 am

just ask a non computer person what operating systems are available and most likely you will hear MS or sometimes Mac. to the average computer user there is only one choice for many reasons one of them is the other choices are not well promoted.

2003-04-26 1:15 am

they are not going to pay for a peruser OS.

2003-04-26 2:19 am

“just ask a non computer person what operating systems are available and most likely you will hear MS or sometimes Mac.”

NOT true. Ask a non-computer person what operating

systems are available and you will get one and just one

answer: “Word”. :oP

2003-04-26 5:22 am

haha i meant someone closer to the middle between an expert and total idiot. but that is true many times too lol.

Webservers that operate behind a caching system, load balancer, reverse proxy server or a firewall may sometimes report the operating system of the intermediate machine. Hence reports of ‘Microsoft/IIS on Linux’ may indicate that either the web server is behind a Linux server that is acting as a reverse proxy, or has configured the Akamai caching system such that the first request to the site goes to one of Akamai’s servers [which run Linux], or as in the case of http://www.walmart.com has been configured to send a misleading signature.”

2003-04-26 12:13 pm

“Why is there no command line only version?

We’re looking longer term to see what can be done, looking at the layers and what’s available at each layer and how do we make it much closer to the thing the Linux guys have — having only the pieces you want running. That’s something Linux has that’s ahead of us, but we’re looking at it. We will have a command line-only version, but whether it’ll have all the features in is another matter. A lot of the tools depend on having the graphical interface. Printing, for example, requires all the graphics subsystems because we have the “what you see is what you get” model. You need to have the whole of the display stuff to render it. It’s a very tangled subsystem.”

Now Microsoft has “innovated” itself into a corner of stuffing its Christmas stocking full of unnecessary items, they go and say they’re way behind Linux – which is true enough.

And how “tangled” should it be – I mean, I’m currently working as gofer for a private ITO, and I had once to print out about 200 pages of Publisher stuff, all independent items. I could quite easily strangle the designers of Publisher and the printing subsystem for that experience! NO provision for BATCH PRINTING WHATSO-BL&*DY-EVER!

Talk about interactivity run riot!

2003-04-26 1:15 pm

In a couple of years MS will release its own (incompatible) BSD distro. The FUD will be about bringing choice to the IT market.

2003-04-26 1:47 pm

Microsoft had a monopoly (the USSC ruled as such), but that isn’t illegal by it’s self. What is illegal is abusing a monopoly.. something Microsoft clearly did. Instead of competeing they used their monopoly to keep competition out. They forced OEMs to accept licenses that stopped them from building computers with another OS on them if they also built computers with Windows on it.

This is what is meant by calling it a death grip. You just seem ignorant of the facts and simply ignorant of the monopoly laws in the United States.

2003-04-26 2:19 pm

Oh lordy, I needed something to make my day. *NIX being hard to manage. I mean, unless you’re a complete dimwitt and cannot read a friendly manual, *NIX and *BSD are just as easy to manage as Windows and in some cases easier.

I’ve got a $40 book at home that covers almost every aspect of managing a *NIX/*BSD system. It covers not only SYSV like systems such as Linux, but also *BSD systems such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Solaris (which has some BSD’isms).

There is a difference between being difficult and being different. It is about time people like oberto started realising this and stopped making such blatently stupid comments off the cuff.

2003-04-26 4:05 pm

Matthew,

Its very hard to find a Unix admin that will want to do helpdesk level work. When someone typically has the skills to manage, secure and deploy a NIX system it is mostly on the server end and not on the desktop.

Shop around for one and I bet you can find a MCP/MCSE for cheaper that will work in a helpdesk versus an individual that is RHCE, Solaris or Linux+ certified.

These are the realities of the market, despite the idea of “NIX” ease of use according to you. Businesses want people that can hit the ground running. They look for solutions that are easy to use, learn, deploy and support. The solutions they deploy have to be familiar to their customer base and in a way has to be a low common denominator.

If Linux certified individuals outnumbered MCPs 10 to 1 that maybe the case but its not. The problem with a lot of geeks is that they understand the technology but not the business of technology.

If a company brings in a newbie into their IT department they will hit the ground running faster on Windows because more likely than not they have received some training on it.

I do believe that Linux on the CORPORATE desktop has a future, so do my IT managers. Is it ready now? I don’t think so and it shows.

A corporate user base doesn’t like new and different. They are not interested in computers, they are just interested in doing their jobs and don’t have time for someone to mull over their computer trying to install software or reading man pages.